Monk Of Mokha Quotes

Money is ephemeral, moving from person to person, it's a tool. Don't let it get into your heart or soul.

Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart.

So much human attention and expertise, in fact, that even at four dollars a cup, chances were some person—or many people, or hundreds of people—along the line were being taken, underpaid, exploited.

Coffee could be smelled and tasted and touched. And it was a commodity, recession-proof. Next to gasoline, it might be one of the most recession-proof commodities of all.

He had had a dream, and dreams are heavy things, requiring constant care and pruning.

Historically, Yemen, when not being invaded or colonized by outside powers, from the Ottomans to the British, was fighting itself.

They brought you here so you could have choices,” Ghassan said. “And you’re blowing it. If you want to do something different when you grow up, you’re going to have to get your shit together.

Mokhtar and his friends would be working a hustle when one of them would look up. Isn’t that your pops, Mokhtar? His father circled his childhood as he circled the city—a kind of sixty-foot roaming conscience.

If you believe there's only one path to God, then you're limiting God.

Own the error and correct it,” he said. Hamood had a thousand proverbs and maxims. His favorite was Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart. He used that one a lot.

It means that money is ephemeral, moving from person to person,” Hamood said. “It’s a tool. Don’t let it get into your heart or your soul.” Mokhtar spent a year with Hamood

Education about Yemen will come through customers’ engagement with the product. And in the meantime you’ll employ actual Yemeni people. And you’ll do something tangible. And you’ll make a living. And you won’t have to ask for donations. And it won’t have to be about Islam. You’re not selling Islamic coffee beans. Sell Yemeni beans. Do that, and do it well, and the rest will follow.

There were twenty-five million people in Yemen and at least thirteen million guns -- after the United States, it was, per capita the world's most armed nation. Men wore AKs walking down the sreet. They brought them to weddings.

And how these bridgemakers exquisitely and bravely embody this nation’s reason for being, a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome. And how when we forget that this is central to all that is best about this country, we forget ourselves—a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale, by the inherent rightness of pressing forward, always forward, driven by courage unfettered and unyielding.

The last step was convincing the customer to pay for it. A customer accustomed to a two-dollar cup of coffee will startle at the idea of paying five dollars for a cup of direct-trade Ethiopian coffee. But if the customer knows that five dollars is the actual price that cup of coffee should be—the correct price to ensure that everyone involved in bringing that cup of coffee into existence is being treated humanely and given a chance to live with dignity—would that customer balk or step up?

Everywhere along the line there were people involved. Farmers who planted and monitored and cared for and pruned and fertilized their trees. Pickers who walked among the rows of plants, in the mountains’ thin air, taking the cherries, only the red cherries, placing them one by one in their buckets and baskets. Workers who processed the cherries, most of that work done by hand, too, fingers removing the sticky mucilage from each bean. There were the humans who dried the beans. Who turned them on the drying beds to make sure they dried evenly. Then those who sorted the dried beans, the good beans from the bad. Then the humans who bagged these sorted beans. Bagged them in bags that kept them fresh, bags that retained the flavor without adding unwanted tastes and aromas. The humans who tossed the bagged beans on trucks. The humans who took the bags off the trucks and put them into containers and onto ships. The humans who took the beans from the ships and put them on different trucks. The humans who took the bags from the trucks and brought them into the roasteries in Tokyo and Chicago and Trieste. The humans who roasted each batch. The humans who packed smaller batches into smaller bags for purchase by those who might want to grind and brew at home. Or the humans who did the grinding at the coffee shop and then painstakingly brewed and poured the coffee or espresso or cappuccino. Any given cup of coffee, then, might have been touched by twenty hands, from farm to cup, yet these cups only cost two or three dollars. Even a four-dollar cup was miraculous, given how many people were involved, and how much individual human attention and expertise was lavished on the beans dissolved in that four-dollar cup. So much human attention and expertise, in fact, that even at four dollars a cup, chances were some person—or many people, or hundreds of people—along the line were being taken, underpaid, exploited.

Al-Shadhili became known as the Monk of Mokha, and Mokha became the primary point of departure for all the coffee grown in Yemen and destined for faraway markets.

India now is the world’s sixth-largest coffee producer,

Coffee became the stimulant of choice for the new nation, bought primarily from the Dutch—thus the moniker “java.

cherries grown in Colombia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda, Guatemala, Mexico, Hawaii, Jamaica and Ethiopia.

Even a four-dollar cup was miraculous, given how many people were involved, and how much individual human attention and expertise was lavished on the beans dissolved in that four-dollar cup. So much human attention and expertise, in fact, that even at four dollars a cup, chances were some person—or many people, or hundreds of people—along the line were being taken, underpaid, exploited.

Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Sara Lee—that buy 40 percent of the world’s coffee.

There were twenty-five million people in Yemen and at least thirteen million guns—after the United States, it was, per capita the world’s most armed nation.

A good coffee should be roasted gently, in small batches, and lightly.

and sugar was added to the hot coffee

The civet was expert at picking the ripest cherries to eat, and afterward, its feces were found to have done all the processing work usually requiring man and machine and much water.

In September of 2014, Mokhtar became the world’s first Arab Q grader of arabica coffee,

Any Tenderloin kid was always prepared.

You're in front of my face," he said every day. It was an old Yemeni expression, hard to translate into English. It was something you said to a loved one, to a friend, while pointing to your own face. It meant that the person before you was never out of your vision. That you kept them foremost in your mind.

But if the customer knows that five dollars is the actual price that cup of coffee should be—the correct price to ensure that everyone involved in bringing that cup of coffee into existence is being treated humanely and given a chance to live with dignity—would that customer balk or step up?

There were various coffees with cheese—cheese dunked in a cup of hot coffee and later eaten when the mixture softly congealed.

If the farmer gets forty times the commodity rate, then what had been a break-even endeavor becomes a profession—and everyone involved could live with dignity and pride.

In Senegal there was café touba, where the beans were mixed with selim and other spices during roasting, and sugar was added to the hot coffee—making a very sweet and aromatic drink.

Fake it till you make it.

The effect of his appearance on the world was profound. He walked through the city not as a poor Tenderloin kid, his baggy clothes shrouding him with negative assumptions, but as Rupert, the preppy cartoon bear, who was welcome anywhere. He became someone the adults he encountered—at his high school, at the mosque, at any store he entered—trusted and wanted around.

The third wave offered to free farmers from the C market. There might be a farmer in Ethiopia who had, for twenty years, been subject to dollar-a-pound commodity pricing—a rate that kept him and his employees in poverty. But if that farmer managed to create an exceptional coffee, he or she might enter it into a regional or global competition, and if that coffee was highly rated, he or she could get the attention of a third-wave roaster, like Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea or Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland. And then something extraordinary could happen. They could trade directly.